Now Recruiting Patients for an Important Study

Kidney transplant patients will need anti-rejection drugs for the rest of their lives. The Stanford Medical Center Program in Multi-Organ Transplantation is enrolling patients into a research study to determine if donor blood cells injected after kidney transplantation will change the immune system such that anti-rejection drugs can be completely withdrawn. Patients must have a healthy, perfectly matched (HLA-identical) brother or sister as the organ and blood cell donor.

One to two months before kidney transplant surgery, blood cells will be removed from the donor and the cells will be frozen. Recipient and donor surgeries will be performed as usual. After transplant surgery, the recipient will receive radiation localized to immune cells and anti-T cell antibody treatments for two weeks to prepare for injection of the blood cells. The blood cells will be injected at the end of the two-week treatment. If the blood cells persist in the recipient, anti-rejection drugs will be gradually reduced until they are withdrawn completely at six months after transplantation. Patients will be followed in the Stanford clinics for transplant patients. Patients who live outside of the San Francisco Bay Area must remain near Stanford for six to eight weeks after transplant surgery.

The purpose of this study is to determine the proportion of patients that can be withdrawn completely from anti-rejection drugs while maintaining normal function of perfectly matched living related donor kidney transplants. Fifteen participants will be conditioned with total lymphoid irradiation (TLI) and rabbit anti-thymocyte globulin (ATG), and given an infusion of donor blood cells after transplantation.